Dordogne Retreat - a farmhouse tale

The overall game plan for the terrace and around the pool is to get the areas ready for concreting. This means installing all the drainage, electrics etc and raising to the correct level. The are then needs to be left to settle (you could use a whacker plate) for a year or so before concreting, and then tiling. The terrace has been down for a over a year so could be concreted but we haven't got the quotes for the work (or the funds for it this year!) and want the terrace and pool area done at the same time. So given that we want to be able to walk from the house to the pool without shoes we decided to concrete the area between the two sets of steps ourselves. Electrics were laid in first for power and lighting down by the pool, the area was prepared and the mixing started. Unfortunately my assistant had a small emergency and stopped after about a quarter of the work so I had to finish it on my own!

Job done, and it certainly makes the walk to the pool much easier on bare feet!

The final footings for the other two sets of steps at the back of the house were laid, with help from Alan. The trickier bit is getting the height right, we will know when we build the steps!

Bedroom steps to be:

Dining room steps to be:

Just thought this was a nice photo:

When we left in the summer the gazebo was still up so we couldn't see the two sets of steps in 'alignment' and their full glory:

Ben completed the installation of the railings and we cleaned and started painting them. We had bought the Hammerite MetalMaster spray paint gun that is meant to give a 360 coverage  and each can (expensive at £14) is meant to cover up to 12 metres of railings. So we have about 25 metres so I bought twice the suggested number of cans - 4. This only covered about 3/4 of the railings and the coverage was not good so we then had to paint them by hand. So a thumbs down from us on the Metalmaster - expensive paint and poor coverage. Our bars are square, it may work better on round verticals but I won't be trying it!

Back to the terrace.... the final effect of the railings was immpressive and they actually made the terrace feel even larger which given our concern that it would make it seem smaller was very pleasing.

With my back playing up I was of little help to Alan as he designed and built the central set of steps from the house down to the terrace.

Alan unfortunately didn't see the steps in their final finished glory with the slabs cut, bedded in and grouted:

My thanks to Alan for all his help and suggestions on this project, the final result is much better than my original idea.

The terrace was transformed today by the fitting of the railings and we are pleased with the results, for some reason they make the terrace seem even bigger.

Still work to be done finishing the fitting, handrails down the steps, edges smoothed and then of course painting. But for the painting we have a secret weapon - an electrostatic sprayer that is supposed to be able to paint all sides with one spray and little/no overspill. Will report back on theory vs practice.

Ben had installed the steel supporting posts for the terrace railings and my job was to fit the coping stones before the railings are installed.

All well and good but drilling accurately (or in my case nearly accurately!) some 30 25mm holes in the stone was an interesting challenge however with a bit of patience and using 6 different drill sizes for each hole the task was completed.